Lembeh, NEX 5 and subsee +10

[bfowles]

I have finally gone through all my photos from my trip to Lembeh in April this year. I stayed at NAD Lembeh again and was very happy with service and I highly recommend them. This was my second time there shooting with the NEX 5 except this time I had some new toys to play with. For this trip I had two strobes instead of one, the 30mm macro lens and subsee +10 diopter as well as the inon ucl-165 diopter.
The visability wasn't as good as last year but I saw even more critters than last time! Unfortunately no hairy octopus this time around. I mostly shot with 18-55mm using the subsee +10 diopter but on the last day I switched to the 30mm macro. On reflection I should have used the 30mm a bit more during the trip as there was a lot of subjects that it would have good for.
The 18-55mm lens with the subsee +10 was good but slow focusing and sometimes inaccurate focusing but I would quite often focus lock on something with a lot of contrast and then just rock the camera housing backwards and forwards until focus was obtained. For some of the smaller (less than 1cm in some cases) critter I used inon ucl-165 and subsee +10 stacked. While this worked the image quality did suffer and the focusing distance was extremely close.
In the end I was getting quite frustrated with the setup, especially when watching another diver with his 60mm macro on an SLR easily taking photos. Macro on NEX system is just not it's strong point and it looks like it will take a long time for ideal macro lens to come out Sony just seem to be interested in releasing the same focal length lenses. This has made me to decide to change over to an SLR, and I managed to get the Nauticam NA-D7000V for a good price on the weekend.

My pictures from the trip can be seen at Lembeh 2012 - a set on Flickr


chromodoris-elisabethina-1 by Byron.Fowles, on Flickr


cuttle_in_xenia by Byron.Fowles, on Flickr


soft-coral-crab-2 by Byron.Fowles, on Flickr

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Here are some sample of stacking the inon and the subsee.


hairy-shrimp-1 by Byron.Fowles, on Flickr


tiger-shrimp-2 by Byron.Fowles, on Flickr

 

[bvanant]

Byron:
Great shots. I agree that macro is not the strong suit of the Nex, but using the 30 macro with strobes pretty much parallel to the macro port works OK. Great shot of the chromidoris by the way, I really like the lighting. I too am waiting for the next SONY lenses (I mostly shoot a 7D/Nauticam) but am getting tempted by the OMD if Nauticam makes a housing.
Bill

 

[bfowles]

Thanks Bill

While the 30mm works with lots of particles in the water it was quite hard to light the subject as you don't have much room to move the strobes. If I had of used it for a few more dives though I think I probably would of found a better position.
I tried an OMD on the weekend (on land only) and I wasn't impressed with the viewfinder. The lighting where I tried the camera was not the best and showed the limitations of the EVF. Also if you compare the the EVF on the OMD to the NEX 7 there is a massive difference. The NEX 7 is almost like looking through an optical finder, the resolution on OMD still looks quite poor and there was also some lag with the display which I never noticed with the NEX 7.

 

[alien]

I really like the NEX7 EVF it is my savior with my poor close up eyesight. Byron I am so sad you are leaving the NEX5I am also frustrated. Hopefully when I try out the Subsee +10 in Komodo and see how I go will get some reasonable results. I like the 30mm macro but not good enough for super macro.

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Byron do you use a focus light as well as the 2 strobes? I have just bought a Sola 1200 with the red light

 

[bfowles]

Yes I use an inon le-550-w, you will love the sola. When I originally looked at the sola 600 in Australia it was priced a bit too high. The prices now seem to have come down quite a lot. The red light feature will be awesome as well, with the inon you have to screw in a filter for the red light so I have only used it a few times. My D2000 strobes have the red filter on the modelling lights so I can use those most of the time anyway. That is how I took the photo of the bobbit worm. The only downside to the sola is that you can't replace the batteries so if you are doing many dives during the day you may not have it fully charged if you do a night dive as well.
If I had the NEX 7 I would probably wouldn't of switch over so quickly.

 

[chile7236]

gorgeous shots...

 

[alien]

Ok nice call Byron. I hope the Sola improves the focusing speed. The 1200 is amazingly bright. 3 levels of white and 3 levels of red. Yes cant change batteries but it will recharge to 75% in an hour so I think it is okay. Jane had no problems in Truk with it. Ocean Divers have sold quite a few. People are also buying them as nice light bright dive lights as well.

 

[BluewaterPhoto]

Byron - first 3 shots looks great! The Sola light will make an immense improvement in the focusing speed. Huge. The subsee +10 is a hard lens to use, you may have better luck with a +6 or +7 diopter for some shots. Btw, Nauticam is definitely making a housing for the Olympus OM-D, can't wait to get one! - Scott

 

[bfowles]

Thanks Scott, I have read a lot of your stuff on Underwater Photography Guide. The information there has been very helpful.

 

[BluewaterPhoto]

thanks Byron - glad to hear that! Keep up the good work. - Scott